City Without a Church

Two very startling things arrest us in John's vision of the future. The first is that the likest thing to Heaven he could think of was a City; the second, that there was no Church in that City. Almost nothing more revolutionary could be said, even to the modern world, in the name of religion. No Church-that is the defiance of religion; a City-that is the antipodes of Heaven. Yet John combines these contradictions in one daring image, and holds up to the world the picture of a City without a Church as his ideal of the heavenly life.